ABSTRACT
Emotional competence – expressing, understanding, and regulating emotions in an adaptive manner – is crucial in its own right, and for young children’s social and preacademic development. In this chapter we review the nature of and skills involved in emotional competence, and their interrelation and acquisition during early childhood. Each aspect of emotional competence undergoes important transformation during early childhood. The ways in which emotional competence contributes to preschoolers’ social and preacademic progress are highlighted: a positively expressive emotional style, more developmentally appropriately sophisticated emotion knowledge, and increasing ability to regulate emotional expression and experience are the hallmarks of successful social interaction and learning. Next, we examine how intrapersonal and especially interpersonal contributors (i.e., parents and teachers), as well as gender and culture, can impact early childhood emotional competence. Each of these contributors can affect the acquisition and demonstration of early childhood emotional competence. Finally, issues regarding educational programming and assessment to foster early childhood emotional competence are discussed, given its foundational importance to concurrent and later development in several domains.
